This blog is my ramblings about building and flying my airplanes. Its purpose is to give me some kind of documentation of my build process but in truth its only here so I don't have to keep answering the question...what are you working on now? ;-)

Monday, December 28, 2015

Today was the first time in a long time that Harry, Jeff and I got a chance to do some flying together. The original plan was to head south to Oregon but the weather down there wasn't really conducive to that so we planned for Yakima. After takeoff Jeff was monitoring weather over in the Yakima valley and guess what? Yep the weather went marginal over there. We decided to head south and just fly around a bit and eventually wander over to Bremerton for some lunch.

We had a bit of excitement trying to land at Bremerton as there was a Cessna that wasn't really interested in playing along with the rest of us in the pattern, nor did he seem interested in talking on the radio. So after a couple of 360 degree turns, lots of chatter about where he was, and even a go around we managed to get all three of us down on the runway.

After a good lunch we decided to follow Harry around the north end of Seattle, over the Snoqualmie Falls, and then back down to Puyallup where it seems everybody with an airplane had decided it was time to fly as well. Fun!

Upon landing Jeff hopped into my airplane and we did an IFR approach into Tacoma Narrows, then the GPS back into KPLU. We put away my airplane and then hopped in his airplane to do the same circuit with him at the controls. We both agreed that we need to do this type of thing at least once a month to keep proficient!

Not many pictures of the day but I did get some video...haven't had much luck posting videos here so I have posted a link on Dropbox for those who want to see the flight.

Wow, only two weeks since my last post...I must be getting better...not.

For the last two weeks I haven't done too much work on the 10 but I did re-do some work. I had started putting the rudder together and after getting the ribs riveted together I tried to get the forward spar to fit. Well guess what? I had installed all of the ribs on the wrong skins! That required some amount of cussing and then a long process of drilling out all of the rivets, and then re-riveting the entire structure back together again. I'm almost back to the point where I started the week.

On a more positive note, yesterday Harry and I drove up to a house north of here and took a look at a 10 wing kit that someone was selling. The work looked pretty good and most importantly there wasn't a ton of riveting done. I really want to do the majority of the work on the kit myself but I couldn't say no to the huge savings I would get if I purchased this wing kit. After looking at the work on both the wing, and the completed empennage I decided to purchase it. Now I have a backup empennage kit that I can sell (assuming I don't mess up the one I am working on now). Harry was nice enough to offer to come help me pick up the kit today!

Finally on my list of news I got to do some flying this week but I will save that for another post.

OH yea, I also installed a step up converter on the 9 landing light mount. Now I can install the 24v LED landing lights that Harry gave me!

Look at all those pretty rivets! Yep, I had to drill them all out and the ones on the other skin not shown in this picture.

Ok, this looks a little odd, but its actually me riveting the two skins together. The upper skin is lifted up so I can work on the ribs one at a time and then lower the skin to the next rib. Yes this was taken before I figured out I had put the ribs on the wrong skins....

Monday, December 14, 2015

Another long hiatus from posting but I think I am slowly getting back into the build again. I've spent a few days this past week working on the rudder of the 10 and I have a picture of two below to show the progress but I think more importantly you have to see what has been taking up all my garage time.

One of the downfalls of building an airplane in your garage is the dust and aluminum shavings that seem to get on everything. Well for the 10 I decided to limit that as much as possible so I have partitioned off the smaller bay of the garage with a temporary insulated wall. On that wall I have built a small "paint station" that I can use to spray primer on the parts that need it. The neat part of the new paint station is that I have added a ducted fan to the base of it and am venting the exhaust outside. Hopefully this will keep the overspray dust down a bit better than what I did with the 9.

Anyway, on with some pictures...

This is the new temporary wall from the larger part of the garage.

This little hole in the wall is where the ducted fan exhaust goes through the new temporary wall. I took this picture before I actually built the rest of the paint station.

My little vent elbow that I will use to duct the overspray vent outdoors.

A little hard to see in this picture but this is my new priming station. I have the plans sitting on the screen top in this picture and I have not put up the sloping lower front panel but the entire top part can be collapsed against the wall if I need the extra space in the room.

A look from the garage door end of the room. You can see the door to the new work space here.

another shot of the temporary wall and you can see the paint station in the back corner of the room.

The rudder just after I finished final drilling all the necessary holes. I had started to remove the cleco's and realized I haven't been taking may pictures so I stopped to "capture the moment"

After final drilling of the rudder it was time to disassemble and debur.

Countersinking the AEX wedge that connects the two trailing edges of the rudder. I'm using my drill press to make sure the countersinks are perpendicular.

Here you can see my "jig" that I created to ensure the wedge was held at the correct angle while I did the countersinking.

Another view of the widge jig. The holes are there to give the countersink bit guide pin a place to go below the wedge during the countersinking process.

Back to the DRDT2 dimpling tool. Here I'm dimpling the rudder skins. This tool is so much faster and easier than the way I did it on the 9 not to mention the dimples are higher quality and more consistent. Well worth the money I paid for it.